"New VCU Engineering Test Beds Will Boost Security of State's NextG, Medical Devices and Smart Cities"
Three new test beds, funded by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI), will be used by researchers and business partners at Virginia Commonwealth University's (VCU) College of Engineering to examine the security of medical devices, NextG applications, and smart city operations. The CCI is a collaboration of industry, higher education, and economic development partners that serves as a research, workforce development, and innovation engine at the intersection of cybersecurity, autonomous systems, and intelligence. The new test beds include the NextG test bed, Medical Device Security test bed, and OpenCyberCity test bed. The first will provide radio silence to enable 5G experiments in an isolated environment, and the second will be dedicated to testing medical devices to find and develop suggestions for mitigating vulnerabilities. The third test bed will run experiments related to smart cities and autonomous vehicles on a realistic, small-scale cityscape. These test beds are expected to add to the CCI network's capability to assess technology and applications from industry and government partners before they are widely used. Students will also be able to gain meaningful experiential learning opportunities from using the test beds in order to prepare for a career in the cybersecurity field. Students and researchers will be able to experiment with algorithms that ensure safety, efficiency, and security across systems. This article continues to discuss the three new test beds aimed at helping researchers bolster the security of medical devices, NextG applications, and smart city operations.